Today in Science: Science beyond the solar system's edge

Never miss a scientific discovery with this daily newsletter December 16, 2024: No, fossil fuels aren't essential to our society forever. Plus, science at the far reaches of the sun's magnetic field and how "ghost guns" work. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor TODAY'S NEWS Jack Andersen/Getty Images • Crucial science: A mathematician has calculated the ideal shape for a beer glass to keep the liquid inside as cool as possible. | 5 min read • We explain "ghost guns" and the other anti-surveillance tech that Luigi Mangione used to evade arrest. | 5 min read • Certain lipids, which are commonly found in seed oils used to make ultraprocessed junk food, particularly omega-6 fatty acids, may promote inflammation in colon cancer tumors. | 6 min read • A comb jelly with two butts. Bees that sucker-punch ants. The animal research made us laugh this year. | 3 min read More News TOP STORIES Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, or the edge of the heliosphere, in August 2012. Heading in a different direction, Voyager 2 crossed another part of the heliopause in November 2018.NASA/JPL-Caltech Beyond the Heliosphere Twenty years ago today, NASA's Voyager 1 reached the termination shock, the boundary a few billion miles from the sun where the influence of the sun's plasma and magnetic field starts to weaken. In the years since, the twin Voyager probes have brought scientists a wealth of information--and, in turn, questions--about the outer reaches of our heliosphere (the magnetic bubble the sun creates) and what lies beyond. What they found: Between the two Voyager probes and observations gathered closer to Earth, scientists are finally piecing together a view of the outer heliosphere—a mindblowingly distant region that's difficult to study. The heliosphere grows and shrinks over the course of the sun's 11-year cycle, with fluctuations in the plasma and magnetism radiating across billions of miles in the form of the solar wind. Beyond the heliosphere is interstellar space, which contains energetic atomic fragments called galactic cosmic rays, as well as dust expelled by dying stars across the universe's eons. What the experts say:  "We know now how little we know about the heliosphere," says Merav Opher, a space physicist at Boston University. "It's way more complex, way more dynamic than we thought." --Meghan Bartels, senior news reporter No, We Don't Need Fossil Fuels This year is on track to be the hottest on record, and climate warming fueled deadly floods, landslides and storms around the world. Despite the realities, ExxonMobil's 2024 Global Outlook declares that "oil and natural gas remain vital" because they are "needed for modern life." The fossil fuel industry has a long history of telling U.S. consumers that oil and gas are essential, even when the dangers of continued usage are clear, writes Harvard University science historian Naomi Oreskes.  Historical case in point: In the 1920s, General Motors introduced leaded gasoline. Their researchers had discovered that lead helped fuel burn more evenly and stopped engine "knocking" sounds. Challenged by the U.S. surgeon general, the company admitted they had no safety data, despite the fact that lead was a known toxicant. After decades, Americans' lead blood levels were estimated to be 100 times the natural expected rate and beyond the levels that cause at least low-level lead poisoning. Throughout this time period oil and gas companies steadily argued that leaded gasoline was essential for the U.S. economy, for industrial progress and for the American way of life. What the experts say: Transitioning away from fossil fuels will take years, yes. But the oil and gas industry has done everything it can to delay the process, prioritizing profits over human health. "The response of the fossil-fuel industry is to shrug its shoulders and insist that, despite all the climate damage that fossil fuels cause, we just can't live without them," writes Oreskes. EXPERT PERSPECTIVES • A Black scientist still has never won a Nobel in physiology/medicine, physics or chemistry. "We believe the Nobel Committees need to recognize that, whether overtly or subconsciously, scientists can and do show gender and racial bias when they recognize people as leaders in their fields," write doctors and professors of medicine and psychiatry Jared Boyce, Faith Crittenden and AZA Allsop. Academic references to a scientist's work, called citations, are one of the key metrics that help determine which researchers are considered for Nobel prizes. "We are disheartened by reports that the published research of Black scientists is referenced far less often than that of their white peers," they say. | 5 min read More Opinion TOP STORIES OF THE YEAR Revisiting editors' favorite science stories from 2024 Chris Wren and Kenn Brown/mondoworks • The universe is full of holes. Called cosmic voids, these huge empty spaces can stretch from tens to hundreds of millions of light-years across, and astronomers are investigating what might cause them--dark matter, dark energy, or even neutrinos. | 13 min read In 2022 Voyager I, the 46-year-old probe that has been in interstellar space since 2012, started sending back gibberish. It could have been the end of the legendary craft's useful lifespan. But Voyager's project team on Earth didn't give up. After months of unanswered transmissions and failed fixes, this past spring the spacecraft finally responded with a familiar code. NASA followed up with a series of repairs to reprogram a damaged microchip onboard and the craft resumed sending scientific data back to Earth. It was one of the success stories of 2024.    I'll be revisiting many of this year's great science news stories this week. Send your favorites to: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow.  —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters here. Scientific American One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004   Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American here   Unsubscribe Email Preferences View in browser